Two Chickadee work hard on slender branches to keep creation ripe for the word of continuity chirping through neighbor's dog barking.

The word of continuity -- (now the second dog barks contretemps to first) -- is suffusing awareness. We are the vibrating appearance of that word of continuity in everyday phenomenological moving from emptiness to form and back again. It is this betweenness writers about Jesus found so intriguing: He's there; he's gone; oh, there he is; where'd he go? Jesus would slip through silence/stillness the way a slash (/) inserts itself between words/things to hold them together while distinguishing distinctiveness.

With Jesus, as with all properly understood and authentically apprehended slashes (/), there is a falling away, a falling through. With this birth/death, human/divine, resurrection/ascension motif -- wherein both sides (seeming to be 'two') fall off and disappear -- we are left with only the slash (/). This is the concretion. This is the between.

This betweenness is a concretion. 'Concretion,' i.e. "to make actual or real: cause to take on the qualities of reality" --#2, in Merriam-Webster's). This concretion/between then itself slips from view (having nothing to hold fast) and itself enters the dwelling-place of what-exists-between-us-but-is-not-seen-nor-felt until we practice interconnectivity.

This is the usual dwelling place of what we call 'God' -- (when and if we indeed ever do call God). This calling, by whatever resonating vibration formulating sound/name in human speech or by any other sentient being's utterance, is our aspiration with every prayer, any mantra, each and every soulful murmur heard.) Everyone and everything is calling out God -- is calling out to God, is the voice of God calling us to ourselves, is what-is-calling-itself. This calling (Do you have a calling?) is the resonance of a continuity of word. Entre nous, entre les etoiles!

Between us/between the stars is a consolidating continuity of word -- an expression of what-is invisible.

Magnanimous Mind
Is like a mountain,
Stable and impartial;
Exemplifying the ocean, it
Reflects the broadest perspective.
- Dogen (1200-1253)

(The first phrase of a well-known anthem asks the most compelling question: "O say, can you see?")

Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Go out to the whole world; proclaim the Good News to all creation.
(--Mark 16:15)

Belief is like ice. If I had any beliefs, I would melt them down, pour them into the earth, and allow April to breath its transcending breath on them until they disappear into a deeper, more profound presence dwelling between one and the other -- becoming a concretion of one/an/other doing joyful circle-abouts on mornings when monks (chickadee, robin, junco, brook, branch, fallen limbs and leaves, bare trees, sunshine, cool air, curling incense, woman passing cabin window, boots unsheathed, candles lighted, cat at rest, and, finally, God Itself) -- all pass between what, in this sorrowful human world, -- (which thinks thoughts of separation, cultivating loneliness, domination, security, backbiting, exclusion, dismissing, king-of-the-hill, screw you, I'm the best, you're no good, my mother bakes better than yours, we're the only superpower, let's get 'them', you owe us these many dollars, I want your wife, just one more drink, you're not welcome here) -- has come to be called (mistakenly) "the real world."

We Are All Connected
The universe that we inhabit and our shared perception of it are the results of a common karma. Likewise, the places that we will experience in future rebirths will be the outcome of the karma that we share with the other beings living there. The actions of each of us, human or nonhuman, have contributed to the world in which we live. We all have a common responsibility for our world and are connected with everything in it.
(--The Dalai Lama, A Flash of Lightning in the Dark of Night)

Love yourself.

Disappear between everything.

Find what is silent/still.

Don't say a word.

Be what word is.

Between everything.

The 82 year old Buddhist from Nova Scotia sipped coffee at the shop. His hand shook when lifting cup. He said he had intentional familial tremors.

Intention tremor

A rhythmic purposeless shaking of the muscles that begins with purposeful (voluntary) movement. This tremor does not affect muscles that are resting. (--from Health AtoZ)

He says zazen helps. So does Jameson Irish Whiskey.

He said he'll send a postcard when he returns to the Highlands tomorrow.

He hopes to remain a happy agnostic until he dies.

"I don't know," I said.

He liked that.

Earth is home.

In Greek, "oikos," home, dwelling place. Morning -- walking Ragged, sitting on porch, then in loft of meditation cabin -- sound of chattering squirrel, chirping chickadee, and cascading brook. A solitary fly crawls across screen. Bare trees note warming April sun this Maine slow walk to spring.

Service to the Earth is divine service, just as the love of God is human love. All that remains is for us to spell it out in our own lives.
(p.152, in The Cosmostheandric Experience: Emerging Religious Consciousness, Orbis Books, 1993)

Reading Office of Readings, Book of Revelation. Some days the words fall off page and crumple like old leaves with no life in them. Only on some days. This is one of them. None of the ideas, beliefs, and concepts reach me -- like the frantic chattering of red squirrel reluctant to climb on green plastic mesh above feeder. (A second fly appears.)

It doesn't bother me that sometimes scriptures are dead, or that I am dead to them. Last night while chanting the Heart Sutra at end of sitting practice, the collective pitch and tone of the group reached funereal disarray. Sometimes something is lost. It happens often.

Lost

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
(--Poem by David Wagoner, from the book Traveling Light: Collected and New Poems, University of Illinois Press, 1999)

I no longer see home as a fixed place. It becomes breath. Sometimes I'm at home. At times I'm away. A day will come when breath will take itself and leave me. I don't know what will take place that day. (The two-note of sparrow tells me its version. I'm grateful.)

Poet Thomas Berry in The Great Work invites entrance into "...the awareness that the universe is a community of subjects to be communed with, not a collection of objects to be exploited."

This morning -- meow of cat, song of sparrow.

I leave scriptures today to all my angry brothers and sisters, to all those convinced only they have access to the one and only way. I leave God to those who jockey for positions of power or right hand, who mount pulpits of pronouncement or proclamation, occupy offices of control and security. I have wandered out into the open where soles of shoes and expanse of vision hold me balancing aloft for the time being. Enclosed rooms where proper procedure and rules of worship prevail are not for me this morning. White-throated sparrow is chanting the choral line, blue-jay lends antiphonal response.

Each tree sits perfectly in its own meditation. The large pine on its side at edge of hill, snapped twenty feet up, beyond brook near clearing, reclines broken on mountain after last storm.

Today I might die. I consider such unknowing prospect gift. A car passes up Barnestown Road.
Another, down.

It doesn't interest me whether there is any other place, any other dimension, any other realm of being. I entertain no hoops to jump through, no formula to recite, nor any fear worth attention.

I am here now.

On earth.

If you ask me about God, I will say "God is not only...". (There's no need for any further predicate).

Silence and stillness reveal all that is needed to know here for now.

Earth is home.

(Dishes are washed. Windows opened. Second cup of coffee.)

Untie that line.

The Boat and Shore
When you ride in a boat and watch the shore, you might assume that the shore is moving. But when you keep your eyes closely on the boat, you can see that the boat moves. Similarly, if you examine myriad things with a confused body and mind you might suppose that your mind and nature are permanent. When you practice intimately and return to where you are, it will be clear that nothing at all has unchanging self.
--Zen Master Dogen, Moon in a Dewdrop, edited by Kazuaki Tanahashi

Drift off.

Don't row.

Change!

At prison a few days ago we wrestled with the Trappist monk's koan: "Cheer up (Bill), things are only going to get worse."

It's a gift.

Comprehending the fundamental,
Embracing the spirit,
Roam the root of heaven and earth,
Wander beyond the dust and dirt,
Travel to work with non-involvement.
Take care not to let mechanical
Intelligence burden your mind;
Watch what is not temporal
And remain unmoved by things.
- Lao tzu

It doesn't matter what is going on around you -- not in the sense that it determines your inner disposition.

If someone tears down your stone wall, build it up again. If they knock it down again, the next morning place one stone on another and see it stand again. No need for judgment or harsh resentment. Just the fact of what happens and your willingness to cultivate a mind that practices what needs to take place.

So much doesn't seem right.

"What's wrong," said Richard Hugo, "will always be wrong."

It would be wrong not to note what is wrong, but it would be equally wrong to drown in the wrongness of life -- its unfairness, injustices, and hurtful moments.

04.20.2007, The Unseen Dead: Virginia Tech and Health Policy, by RJ Eskow.

My heart breaks for the 33 people who died Monday. It also breaks for the estimated 50 Americans who died on the same day as a result of inadequate health coverage. Most of them had families who loved them, too. Where is their candlelight vigil? Where are their Presidential eulogies, or their exhaustive television coverage?

Instead of receiving their moment of silence, these invisible dead face an eternity of silence.

Lack of health insurance results in the deaths of 18,000 Americans each year, according to studies compiled by the National Academies' Institute of Medicine. That equates to 49 or 50 deaths every day. As the Institute has documented, deaths result from late identification of curable cancer and other conditions, and from inadequate treatment for a range of illnesses that include renal disease and other chronic conditions. (--in The Huffington Post)

It is not as interesting to consider deaths from lack of care -- not when the stunning news of another type of death flashes suddenly before us. The facts of both events are brought to us.

The practice of compassion follows a long hard look at the reality presented to us, and then enters that reality with the ease of acceptance -- maybe even forgiveness -- needed to transform the reality within us. Maybe nothing changes outside us. Maybe it does.

The kitten
holds down the leaf,
for a moment.
(Haiku by Issa, 1763-1827)

For this moment, this kitten, and this leaf.

And then? Ok...And then?

It matters.

It doesn't matter.

What gift is this?

A spring day.

Brook runs. Cat rubs. Dog sleeps. Saskia visits prison. Mice hide in cabin. Birds feed. Squirrels hoard. Ground loosens. Water seeps to surface. Sky is blue. Mountain inhales. I pause. Then, exhale.

Those who are known
As Real People
Are united in essence
With the Way,
So they have endowments yet
Appear to have none;
They are full yet
Appear to be empty.
They govern the inside,
Not the outside.
Clear and pure, utterly plain,
They do not contrive
Artificialities but return
To simplicity.
- Lao tzu

“While you are proclaiming peace with your lips, be careful to have it even more fully in your heart.” (-Francis of Assisi)
It's good advice. I'll try to be careful.

Searching for source of St. Francis of Assisi quote: "What we are looking for is what is looking." Still looking. Could be truest words yet.

First sun in many days. Finally, April.

Some Days

Your handwriting stands
like a small forest on the page
You could enter it anywhere

Your rooms look new to you
maybe you moved a lamp
stretched a swatch of white gauze
across a window

Single stick of incense
waiting

Remember when you wrote:
I devote myself to short sentences

Air answers
Breath remembers

A streak of light
signs the floor

You missed it

Do you know its name yet?
(--Poem by Naomi Shihab Nye)

Bamboo wind-chimes dance. Breeze surveys brown leaves flat against earth.

Inside Out

I have no-
where found
what here-
in dwells
with grace-
full silence
(-- Friday Haiku, wfh, now)

Squirrel complains that someone tossed a twig, interrupting his seedy quest!

What am I missing?

I'll look into it.

"To understand everything is to forgive everything" (- Buddha)

Temporarily, mostly without understanding, we still attempt to practice forgiveness as a worthwhile spiritual undertaking.

Mark Buehrle of the Chicage White Sox throws a no-hitter against the Texas Rangers. It's not important news. It's just the way life goes on.

Outside kitchen window, dawning light Up hill, gently swaying top of tree. Those who wake, wake from night's rest. Those who grieve, grieve even in their sleep. First sparrow arrives at feeder at 5:34am.

Sages lean on a pillar
That is never shaken,
Travel a road that is
Never blocked, are
Endowed from a
Resource that is never
Exhausted, and learn
From a teacher that
Never dies.
They are successful
In whatever they undertake,
And arrive wherever they go.
Whatever they do, they
Embrace destiny and go along
Without confusion.
- Wen-tzu

Tommy, in his stuffed chair, keeps statistics and box score of baseball games he watches. It passes the time. It's a log of movement and event. Who grounded to third? Who walked with a man on? Who was thrown out at second?

We are glad to have facts. They stand by themselves. At times, someone interprets facts, drawing wider or deeper meaning from them. At other times, facts are just there -- nothing added, nothing subtracted.

...one of the beauties of baseball is that you never know what you'll get to see on any particular day. On this one, Buehrle looked like his old, stellar self, working quickly, throwing strikes, and dominating hitters. The end result was a gem, and the White Sox' first no-hitter since 1991, and their first at home in 40 years. In fact, it was the first time the Rangers had been held hitless in more than two decades.
(--'Buehle quick to quiet Rangers,' By Mark Simon, ESPN Research)

We need quieting. Sparrow cracks seed. On tree some 15 yards behind feeder a red squirrel leaps from trunk to trunk arriving at feeder like Nureyev at center stage. The pas de deux between window and green feeder begins. For whom, exactly, are the seeds meant -- bird or squirrel? I am only a sometime arbiter.

Sometimes -- no, often -- 'intention' collapses and a 'lawless' event takes place. Almost always there is a rushing in of interpretation, attempts to assign 'meaning' or 'blame' -- to make sense of an event that teeters on the meaningless, the senseless. Just like on a college campus, after one man shoots, killing and wounding dozens of ordinary people on a Monday morning, there arrives on campus hundreds of guns and semi-automatic weapons drawn with safety off, to secure the event once it has transpired. Anyone, to those guns, is the intruder. Anyone might be targeted.

There is a danger someone might consider it possible that no such event will ever take place again. Loaded guns in the right hands will take on the task of anticipating and nullifying-at-inception any breach of the intention to secure and ensure safety. The idea of safety is a good one. It is a tight idea. It could be seamless. We are tempted toward an unbroken ideal of safety and security. Who wouldn't be?

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.
(Poem, Lyics of 'Anthem' by Leonard Cohen)

Every pitch in every game is thrown with the intent of retiring the hitter, of allowing no-hit. Seldom does that intent complete itself successfully. But, once in a while, it comes close.

Buehrle delighted a cold but enthusiastic crowd of 25,390 at U.S. Cellular Field, who watched him throw the first no-hitter at the ballpark. Only one Rangers batter reached base—Sammy Sosa on a fifth-inning walk—and Buehrle promptly picked him off first base.
(--Chicago Tribune)

Families mourn and attend the unhappy task of burying their dead. We face this fact with quiet respect. Life, some would say, is not a game. It's not. Life is a mystery we face daily. Part of that mystery is the breaking of life, the seeming cessation, suddenly and unexpectedly, of the clear sound and sight of life -- especially the sound and sight of those we love. It happens every day.

As we go on.

We revel at times. At other times we merely, silently, gaze.

Sometimes, rarely, a no-hitter occurs.

The very fact of it.

In understanding.

You.

Forgive me.

And I.

You.

Sorrow is sorrow. It cannot be parceled. If we are going to be sorrowful, let's be sorrowful wherever sorrow exists -- not just our version of sorrow, but the whole of it.

Outwardly go along
With the flow,
While inwardly keeping
Your true nature.
Then your eyes and ears
Will not be dazzled,
Your thoughts will not
Be confused,
While the spirit within you
Will expand greatly to roam
In the realm of absolute purity.
- Huai-nan-tzu

In prison today an inmate asked me to relay his grief to the larger community about what happened in Virginia. I said I would; here I do so.

April 16, 2007: CBC News
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Va.

In the deadliest campus shooting in U.S. history, at least 33 people were killed and several others wounded after a gunman opened fire at Virginia Tech. There are two separate shootings about two hours apart at opposite ends of the campus of 26,000 students, the first at 7:15 a.m. ET at a residence housing more than 800 students and the second at an engineering building. The suspected gunman is among the dead.

We did a class on Spirituality and Lifetime Recovery using poems by Mary Oliver, Derek Walcott, Theodore Roethke, Richard Hugo, Cheslaw Milosz, Jane Kenyon, David Wagoner, Vaclav Havel, and Hafez-e Shirazi.

We are not lost. We are actually happy. No two hurts are the same. We don't have to be good.

4 Blasts in Baghdad Kill at Least 183; STEVEN R. HURST and LAUREN FRAYER | AP | April 18, 2007 07:39 PM EST

BAGHDAD — Suspected Sunni insurgents penetrated the Baghdad security net Wednesday, hitting Shiite targets with four bomb attacks that killed 183 people _ the bloodiest day since the U.S. troop increase began nine weeks ago.

The most devastating blast struck the Sadriyah market as workers were leaving for the day, charring a lineup of minibuses that came to pick them up. At least 127 people were killed and 148 wounded, including men who were rebuilding the market after a Feb. 3 bombing left 137 dead.

Still, there's this death and absurd killing continuing every day in Iraq.

I sorrow for the Virginia Tech students and families.

I sorrow for the Iraqi men, women, and children.

I sorrow for our soul.

The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.
(from Ars Poetica?, Poem by Czeslaw Milosz )

It is difficult.

Isn't it?

Relentless rain soaks sodden earth in mid-coast Maine.

Sages send their spirit
To the storehouse of awareness
And return to the beginning
Of myriad things.
They look at the formless,
Listen to the soundless.
In the midst of profound
Darkness,
They alone see light;
In the midst of silent vastness,
They alone have
Illumination.
- Huai-nan-

Elsewhere, in Iraq, continual horror.

Elsewhere, in Virginia, something like Iraq -- only closer to home.

In both cases someone thinks it passable that others should be shot dead.

As the president and his wife travel the 272 miles from Washington D.C. to attend a memorial convocation ceremony in Blacksburg, Virginia, I join with them in their public concern and sorrow for all innocents killed, here and there.

I join the pilgrimage. I wish to end the hostilities in Iraq. I wish to end the hostilities in Virginia.

It's all I have to bring today (26)

It's all I have to bring today—
This, and my heart beside—
This, and my heart, and all the fields—
And all the meadows wide—
Be sure you count—should I forget—
Some one the sum could tell—
This, and my heart, and all the Bee
Which in the Clover dwell.
(Poem: "It's all I have to bring today (26)" by Emily Dickinson.)

It's a beginning. Public display of consolation and contrition are significant first steps.

I'll start: I'm sorry for what I've done and not done in Iraq. I'm sorry for what I've done and not done in Virginia.

Forgiveness is all I have to begin with. It may be all there is left to us.

It might not be much. But...

It's a beginning.

A yielding.

Like rain.

Rain.

What sages learn
Is to return their nature
To the beginning
And let their minds
Travel freely in
Openness.
What developed people
Learn is to link their nature
To vast emptiness and
Become aware of the
Silent infinite.
- Huai-nan-tzu

Everywhere, over and under everything, rain.

Toward Ultimate Things
Only the walker who sets out toward ultimate things is a pilgrim. ...The pilgrim resolves that the one who returns will not be the same person as the one who set out. Pilgrimage is a passage for the reckless and subtle. The pilgrim--and the metaphor comes to us from distant times--must be prepared to shed the husk of personality or even the body like a worn out coat. A Buddhist dictum has it that "the Way exists but not the traveler on it." For the pilgrim the road is home; reaching your destination seems nearly inconsequential.
--Andrew Schelling, Meeting the Buddha, edited by Molly Emma Aitken

Wind lashes chime with wet striker; night bows head to unknown mystery with no name.

Single candle lights.

Light is prayer; see well.

Dark is prayer; unseen guest.

Extinguish the flame, gust knocks on window frame.

A hundred million drops find sound arriving with earth.

Still. Listening. Rain.

This bare road.

The wandering zen poet monk, Taneda Santoka (1882-1940) -- a haiku nonconformist, an ordained Zen priest -- spent most of his life wandering all over the country of Japan as a begging monk. He wrote today's weather forecast as well as today's soul- & psyche-cast many years ago.

Here in the stillness of snow falling on snow
(--Haiku by Taneda Santoka)

Nothing moves outside window. Across road is Bald Mountain. All is still as death. They say a storm approaches. A wet and wild hurricane-strength wind, they say, gathers its strength to slam New England tonight. Maine will flood. But right now, everything sits zazen. For now, the tomb appears empty, and no matter how often someone peeks in, nothing is seen, nothing moves, and nothing makes sense according to our dim and diminishing lights.

Attain the center of emptiness,
Preserve the utmost quiet;
As myriad things act in concert,
I thereby observe the return.
Things flourish,
Then each returns to its root.
Returning to the root
Is called stillness:
Stillness is called return to Life,
Return to Life is called the constant;
Knowing the constant is called enlightenment.
- Tao-te Ching

There's a great profundity in what we do not know. You would think we'd be enthused over such a prospect -- what we don't know is magnificent, we're nearly there, just drop over the line, fall through floor of pretended savvy, recant and renounce anything pronounced by us as "the way it will be," "'the' truth," and, "do it my way, the only right way."

Choice of Diseases

Now that I'm sick & have
all this time to contemplate
the meaning of the universe,
Father said, I understand why
I never did it before. Nothing
looks good from a prone position.
You have to walk around to appreciate
things. Once I get better I don't
intend to get sick for a while. But
if I do I hope I get one of those diseases
you can walk around with.
(Poem: "Choice of Diseases" by Hal Sirowitz, from Father Said. Soft Skull Press.)

I've always been prone to doubt and despair. Now I like to stand, walk around them, and come to some perspective on them that nods head, mutters "hmmm," and looks off into the distance, rubbing whiskers, coming to see the unmoving tops of trees backed by white snow on mountain side out top frame of bedroom window. What's this side of the mountain got to do with the other side?

Mountain Guides
A good spiritual friend who will help us to stay on the path, with whom we can discuss our differences frankly, sure of a compassionate response, provides an important support system which is often lacking. Although people live and practice together, one-upmanship often comes between them. A really good friend is like a mountain guide. The spiritual path is like climbing a mountain: we don't really know what we will find at the summit. We have only heard that it is beautiful, everybody is happy there, the view is magnificent and the air unpolluted. If we have a guide who has already climbed the mountain, he can help us avoid falling into a crevasse, or slipping on loose stones, or getting off the path. The one common antidote for all our hindrances is noble friends and noble conversations, which are health food for the mind.
(--Ayya Khema, When the Iron Eagle Flies)

This morning the noble friend is mountain itself. The conversation -- between silence and stillness.

Nothing transpires beyond this mere, empty, and lovely realization: I am what you are and it is...as it is...true.

The mere fact -- of being.

The empty gaze -- of life.

The lovely gift -- of it all.

Morning sparrows, their voices say the snow’s
arrived in the distant mountains
(--Santoka Taneda)

And, at last:

The shrike's crying -
For discarding my body,
There is no place.
(--Santoka Taneda)

* Although Santoka may not have been referring to it, there is a famous story about Kuya, a priest who taught the chanting of Buddha's name in the Kyoto area in the tenth century: when Kuya was living amongst the beggars in Kyoto a high-ranked priest named Senkan recognized him at the river side near Shijo Street (nowadays downtown Kyoto), Senkan asked Kuya, "How can I be saved after death?" Kuya answered, "How strange. I rather, should ask you such a question. I'm just a vagrant person who wanders around confusedly. I've never thought of such a thing." Senkan didn't give up, and very respectfully asked him again. Kuya said, "Just discard your body anywhere", and hurried off.
(--Terebess Asia Online {TAO}, Taneda Santoka's Haiku,
http://www.terebess.hu/english/haiku/taneda.html)

No hurry.

Sparrow.

Flies.

Away.

Once we were found. But now we're lost. Once saw. But now are blind.

Our amazing disgrace in Iraq and Afghanistan must be placed where it belongs. On me.

The whole universe,
The whole world, is you;
Do you think
There is any other?
This is why the ancients say,
“People lose themselves,
Pursuing things;
If they could turn things around,
They would be the same as Buddha.”
- Hsueh-feng (822-908)

I did it. Yes -- I did have help from Bush and Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, Tenet and Perle, Rice and Powell, narrow ideology and puffed-up sense of importance -- but I am the one responsible. I dropped the bombs, set the mortars, fired automatic rifles, screamed at innocent people to drop or be shot, and smiled for the cameras while smugly calling into question the patriotism of anyone whose opinion of our unitary superpower status and privilege differed from mine.

I know men and women who believe that by thinking about the war I am drawing attention and attraction to "negative vibrations" that will only cause me not to get what I want from the universe. I do not live on the same earth as those people.

April 15, 2007
Marines’ Actions in Afghanistan Called Excessive
By CARLOTTA GALL

KABUL, Afghanistan, April 14 — American marines reacted to a bomb ambush with excessive force in eastern Afghanistan last month, hitting groups of bystanders and vehicles with machine-gun fire in a series of attacks that covered 10 miles of highway and left 12 civilians dead, including an infant and three elderly men, according to a report published by an Afghan human rights commission on Saturday.

Families of the victims described in interviews this week the painful toll of the attacks, which took place on March 4 in Nangarhar Province. One victim, a 16-year-old newly married girl, was cut down while she was carrying a bundle of grass to her family’s farmhouse, according to her family and the report. A 75-year-old man walking to his shop was hit by so many bullets that his son said he did not recognize the body when he came to the scene.
(--The New York Times)

I lie on the street, my body torn in two from retaliatory gunfire, my life snuffed out because (some say, stupid and arrogant) men and women want to kill and revenge killing.

I've had enough of war. I'll fire my gun until everyone is dead. I'll return to America, collect a medal, then begin to dismantle my church, my community, and my government. I am a hero. I am the sleeping bad dream of a nation that sacrifices nothing while their military service people sacrifice everything. I love this country that uses me, laughs behind my back, and says "Atta boy!" to my face.

I am the president. I no longer believe in my ability to care.

That won't stop me.

I am you.

No?

Watching After Innocence (about exonerees) upstairs over shop. A community prison-related event with pizza and mint chocolate ice cream.

no path but this one —
I walk alone
(poem by Santoka Taneda)

I simply don't know. Tossing.

Two crusts to the sea.

Envy is defined as "painful or resentful awareness of an advantage enjoyed by another joined with a desire to possess the same advantage." (Merriam-Webster)

If you pass your
Whole life half asleep,
What can you rely on?
- Kuei-shan Ling-yu (771-854)

To be jealous is to be "hostile toward a rival or one believed to enjoy an advantage."

Let no one imagine that baptism consists only in the forgiveness of sins and in the grace of adoption. Our baptism is not like the baptism of John, which conferred only the forgiveness of sins. We know perfectly well that baptism, besides washing away our sins and bringing us the gift of the Holy Spirit, is a symbol of the sufferings of Christ. This is why Paul exclaims: "Do you not know that when we were baptised into Christ Jesus we were, by that very action, sharing in his death? By baptism we went with him into the tomb."
(--From the Jerusalem Catecheses)

In the film "The Razor's Edge," Larry says to Isabel: "It doesn't matter." And: "There is no payoff."

It is ego's delusion to want to hold on to what is not ours -- just as it is ego's illusion to attempt to disown what is our very being.

Is it possible to live with no purpose? With no meaning?

If everything is itself and belongs to itself, no exterior meaning or purpose is necessary. When something is what it is, nothing else is needed.

What is true is what is doing itself.

Truth is what is showing itself.

We are all old-timers,
each of us holds a locked razor.
(from poem "Waking in the Blue," by Robert Lowell)

The razor's edge, salvation, is literally -- a greeting, a healing, and a safe passage.

Hello. Can I help? Where is home for you?

Easter Wednesday in Maine is sunny and warm at 43 degrees. The foot of snow from 7 days ago is melting. Patches of hill show. There will be more snow, or rain, tomorrow.

If you wish to cast aside the false
And return to true,
Concentrate and settle your
Mind in wall gazing.
Self and other,
The unenlightened
And the saintly,
Are all as one.
- Bodhidharma

Perhaps what Bodhidharma refers to as wall-gazing is looking at what is there as what is there.

I practiced a kind of "wall gazing" while on retreat. I watched. Without embellishing nor disparaging, keeping eye on what presented itself. By and large, what else is there but what presents itself? We so often create images of what we'd like to call the divine or the holy -- reminders of past figures, events, stories, or experiences.

Looking at what is there as what is there is zen practice. As we become skillful, we come to see, and say what is there in such a way that we are here with what is here. (I have to deepen my practice.)

Holding It All In
I think a lot about the fact that the Buddha made a separate category for Right Speech. He could have been more efficient and included it in Right Action, since speaking is a form of action. For a while I thought it was separate because we speak so much. But then I changed my mind--some people don't speak a lot. Now, I think it's a separate category because speech is so potent. During the 1960s, when the social ethos was "letting it all hang out," I had recurrent fantasies about writing a book called Holding It All In. I think I was alarmed that people had overlooked how vulnerable each of us is. In recent years, I've revised my book title to Holding It All In Until We've Figured Out How to Say It in a Useful Way. I believe we are obliged to tell the truth. Telling the truth is a way we take care of people. The Buddha taught complete honesty, with the extra instruction that everything a person says should be truthful and helpful.
(--Sylvia Boorstein, It's Easier Than You Think)

I am grateful for all the helpful people who have practiced right speech on me.
For all who've shared bread, themselves, and looking, with me.

Then they told their story of what had happened on the road and how they had recognised him at the breaking of bread.
(--Luke 24:35)

Seeing what is there (as what is there) is seeing you, as you are, seeing itself.

Retreat Log

St Joseph's Abbey, Spencer MA,

///

Good Friday

I cannot grasp the notion of "being washed in Jesus' blood.” Maybe I will. (Maybe I won't.) Traveling by way of the cross is a deeply physical as well as metaphorical journey. I've not been satisfied with explanations of sacrifice, whether animal or human blood, in order to settle or attain something. The fact that we die, the fact that Jesus died, are facts to acknowledge. But I'm not yet moved by the notion that animal-killing, blood-feuds, war-slaughter, or even son/daughter killing-sacrifice has anything to do with, nor is associated with, what is in fact the sacred.

I note the suffering and death of Jesus. I'm unconvinced of the subsequent explanation of the purpose and divine order of execution so prevalent in the theology and spirituality of our heritage. Whether the case is Abraham (ready to cut Isaac's throat), Angels (smearing lamb's blood on lintels to facilitate the killing of the right first born), or Adonai (willing/allowing the death of his son as expiation for sin) -- I am reluctant to hold such stories in divine light. I grieve for the first-born that are killed -- whether in ancient Judaic lore, or in contemporary Iraq lawless war.

If the human psyche glorifies slaughter as divine will and historic wish, then (heaven help us!) there is no better way to honor the divine than by participating in the slaughter and murder of the first-born. If the so-called "good guys" as well as "bad guys" utilize the method of killing innocents in the erstwhile liberation/salvation stories of the Ancient Near East, and such telling is celebrated annually as desired rendition, I can't help but feel we are a people with a lost and devastated heart/mind.

///

As night passes, I dream about Slavic cabdriver taking me around New York City. Then I meet a nemesis and we talk a brief while. He says he was hurt by me.

After Vigils at 4:30am, I sit in silence for 30 minutes. One other person in chapel. Woman in first pew is a Sister, a friend of monk Robert.

I am thinking about the prison. I can only face what is.

“What is” is I am not chaplain. My choice was not to be an employee. I am as befuddled by the choice to be offered and accept the position for 6 months as I am delighted by choosing not to continue it. The joy I experienced working with the population of over 900 men -- all religions (and none), all levels of faith understanding (and none) -- was remarkable. Sitting with Buddhists, Christians, Jewish, Muslim, Native, Pagan, AA, and none-of-the-above, whether at their cell doors or in small groups -- was a lesson in learning and service.

Meetingbrook's prison conversations will continue. I'll change status and return to volunteering. :

• Offer to teach independent studies for university credit for those who wish.

• For those not interested in college courses, do time-specific ordinary studies -- (Individual Tutorial Studies) for inmates so interested. (Perhaps 3 ITS's at any given span.) Any topic, any focus -- individualized time and interaction to increase learning.

• Perhaps, through Education Dept., a program in Protective Custody Pod -- or even in SMU (Special Management Unit, the old “Super-Max.”)

• Meet with individual men for purpose of human hospitality and engaging inquiry.

• Begin in outside community prison-related discussion groups, e.g. Restorative Justice, or Prison Fellowship, or Innocence Project.
  
  

  ///

Afternoon, Holy Saturday

The monk Robert says -- “Cheer up! Things will get worse.” He refers to Jesus', “Now is the Son of Man glorified.” He is on the cross. All hurts, humiliations, depressions, pains, snubs, diminishing comments, injustices, doubts, and delusions hang there. And this is the death and reconciliation of the limited and the unlimited -- this being, this man, drawing all to himself, turns the world upside down. It is the weak, the poor, those ill, those without security or means, the broken and the heart-broken -- to these belong the kingdom of heaven.

I walk the woods. Three deer, two ducks, and a tail-slapping beaver later I climb the hill back to retreat house.

I went to see Robert after his conference to talk about recent experience at the prison. He says it was a gift, a grace to be so angry, frustrated, and humiliated. Thomas Aquinas in his ethical teachings claimed virtue existed in the middle between the opposite of the vice and the defining virtue -- but that anger had no opposite. Only the suffering of it. (Maybe “no-anger” -- but that's the absence, not the opposite.)

“Cheer up; things will get worse,” he says, cheerfully.

The way he says it, the prospect isn't unattractive.

The experiential undergoing of injustice deepens the intense longing for justice. The single candle in the dark longs to give way to the bright sun.

///

Final Hours of Holy Saturday

Icon-painting monk asks me if I am a hermit.I say yes. I am, (I think to myself), most likely lying. But I'm not. This hermit is not in seclusion. This hermit dwells within solitude.

There's a difference. This hermit, 90% of the time, arrives late and stays in the rear. (Except visiting the monastery - I arrive on time and stay in the rear.)

Then there's the issues of being active in the bookshop/bakery, at conversations, teaching a course at the university, and the regular visits to prison. Hardly a hermit in any classical sense. More the template of hermit in the open. My cloister is the inter-related solitude of the human heart, one to one, inquiring into “Who am I?” Yet, still a hermit: one dwelling alone with the Alone or Another.

The realms of what some call the relative and absolute dissolve into what I might call the interrelating whole. Jesus tried to teach he and the father were one as we are one with him and the father. We dwell in the interrelating whole. Sometimes we forget this. We then remember. At either times of forgetting or remembering we are prone to hurting one another. Thus the notion of “hurting God” as we hurt one another -- because God is not other than any one or two of us.

We are not equal to God. Equality is a relative term. We are co-responding and co-relating with God. This is not the same kind of relativity or responsibility as the terms seem. To be co-responsive is to share the wording-of-act, and acting-of-word with God. To be co-relating is to be with God in each act. Whether we are conscious of it or not impacts the response we make after the co-responding takes place, Whether we intend our presence or not influences the mind we have after co-relating takes place.

When people ask: How could God allow suffering in the world? We might respond: How can I be of assistance to the one suffering? We, perhaps in a fit of forgetfulness, might have caused the suffering. It always seems reasonable to have someone ask: How could God allow such and such to happen? And yet, mostly, we forget our co-responding and co-relating existential and ontological true nature vis-a-vis God. (Does God forget when we forget?)

The ancient hymn says: “Have this mind in you which was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not reach out his hand to make himself equal to God. Instead, he emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave.” (Philippians)

Might we say: One form, many examples of emptiness? Or: One emptiness, many forms of it?

However we try to word what is beyond words, the Name of God bends us with humility. The profound co-relative and inter-responding entirety of the sacred presence is the meditation and contemplation of our heart/mind as mendicants wandering a strange land.

The Ancient Homily at Vigils says: “Something strange is happening--there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness.”

The homily concludes: “The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity.” Which brings us back to birth. Incarnation. Life.

So: Come alive! Someone once said: “The Glory of God is man fully alive.” (Irenaeus)

Adyashanti says: “The awakeness of this moment is the unconditioned being.”

///

Easter Darkness, 2:02am

Adyashanti says: “It's not about embracing, it's about letting go of not pushing away. That's all.”

///

Easter Morning, 9:42am

The stained-glass metaphor used by Adyashanti works well. The source of light is beyond the red, green, and blue of the glass. The colored glass is our conditioned mind. It sorts light into variety of colors. The result is aesthetically pleasing and soothing.

The unconditioned, unborn, and undivided is the source. If we get a glimpse into that reality, all remains beautiful and undifferentiated. But we often contend one color against another, worship one, demand our color is 'the' color -- thus making warfare and dissension.

Jesus has risen. Indeed, he has truly risen!

So it is we attend the truth of this Christian mystery. Unity consciousness, 'coincidentia oppositorum,' undifferentiated suchness -- Christ Consciousness -- rises following the death of the servant of God.

Whoever serves God undergoes this death. (There are so many willing to assist and expedite this death -- if not, as preface, the suffering leading thereto.)

To be born is to die. To enter the unborn is to practice resurrection.

///

Easter Haiku, 9:29am

to be born is to

die; to enter the unborn

is to practice re-

surrection

(wfh, 8april2007)

[note: the traditional 17 syllable count for haiku is here exceeded by 3 unaccountable syllables.]

+++

haiku 6:14pm

crucifixion ends

abbot lifts host -- we are to

be vault, ground repose

(wfh, 6apr2007)

+++

haiku 8:51am

he was one of us

when we accused him, broken

into two, came death

(wfh, 7apr07)

+++

haiku 8:56am

innocence -- no one

is free from accusation --

there we are, entombed

(wfh, 7apr07)

On retreat. In silence.
...

Nature regenerates itself. White Bald Mountain. Snow through night. Innumerable small falling flakes rendered full moon invisible. With morning, snow shrouds mountain stone with same soft ease it did brilliant moon -- this religious liturgy.

Boundless and free
Is the sky of samadhi,
Bright the full moon
Of wisdom!
Truly, is anything
Missing now?
Nirvana is right here,
Before our eyes;
This very place is the
Lotus Land,
This very body
The Buddha.
- Hakuin

History and sacred memory call to mind the first evenings of Passover. Slavery is repugnant to nature. Yet it continues. From Guantanamo to Pakistan, Africa to towns and suburbs across America -- enslavement is unregenerate nature.

Nicholas Kristof writes about disturbing incidences of sex-slavery. "This kind of neo-slavery is the plight of millions of girls and young women (and smaller numbers of boys) around the world, particularly in Asia."

This nexus of sex trafficking and police corruption is common in developing countries. The problem is typically not so much that laws are inadequate; it is that brothel owners buy the police and the courts.

But Ms. Parveen’s tale arises not only from corruption, but also from poverty.

“If I had money, this wouldn’t be happening,” said Ms. Parveen’s mother, Akbari Begum. “It’s all about money. In the police station, nobody listens to me. The police listen to those who sell narcotics.”

“God should never grant daughters to poor people,” she added. “God should not give sisters to poor brothers. Because we’re poor, we can’t fight for them. It’s very hard for poor people, because they take our daughters and dishonor them. There’s nothing we can do.”
(-- "Sanctuary for Sex Slaves," By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, Published: April 3, 2007, The New York Times, Meerwala, Pakistan, http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/03/opinion/03kristof.html?hp)

Think of Passover, think of Crucifixion, in a new way. Think anew the ancient narratives, not merely as historico-religious recherché, but as contemporaneous real-life revelation impacting our brothers and sisters worldwide. This memoria is daily awareness of the suffering experienced in our world, suffering promulgated by human forgetfulness and human ignorance. We forget, and we cultivate ignorance, when we refuse to stop, turn, and consider with compassion the suffering we cause by our unmindful acts and ego-obsessed behavior. We are called to a much clearer way of being.

Sacred time and sacred awareness invite us into profound emptiness -- there to encounter and embody mystery-of-being yearning to fully realize itself in our midst.
We have to open our being to the unobvious. Often, profound experience and truth dwell just out of view, beyond our distracted attention. We are being called to dwell in an open place of kindness.

In other words, we have to begin a new life, and we cannot do so until our previous life has been brought to an end. When runners reach the turning point on a racecourse, they have to pause briefly before they can go back in the opposite direction. So also when we wish to reverse the direction of our lives there must be a pause, or a death, to mark the end of one life and the beginning of another.
Our descent into hell takes place when we imitate the burial of Christ by our baptism. The bodies of the baptised are in a sense buried in the water as a symbol of their renunciation of the sins of their unregenerate nature.
(--From the book, On the Holy Spirit, by Saint Basil, bishop, Office of Readings, Tuesday of Holy Week, http://www.universalis.com/readings.htm)

Is Basil's presentation of 'baptism' a call requesting our burying Christ, our burying ourselves (self-emptying) in the profound loving and compassionate regeneration? Is what we are, and how we are, actually (and really) at core, the mystery of nature, at origin? Will regenerating nature wash over us -- darken our understanding so as to enlighten our soul -- bringing us to the precipice, to the starting line of authentic life with what we call "God and neighbor"?

Will we ever come to see -- here?

Notes from the Other Side

I divested myself of despair
and fear when I came here.

Now there is no more catching
one's own eye in the mirror,

there are no bad books, no plastic,
no insurance premiums, and of course
no illness. Contrition
does not exist, nor gnashing

of teeth. No one howls as the first
clod of earth hits the casket.

The poor we no longer have with us.
Our calm hearts strike only the hour,

and God, as promised, proves
to be mercy clothed in light.
(--Poem: "Notes from the Other Side" by Jane Kenyon, from Constance. Graywolf Press.)

Is 'there' (possible and possibly) 'here'?

There is so much said and written about degenerate behavior. Do we have the heart to pause, stop, and turn -- to fall below surface, to let flow over and through us a regenerating spirit interpenetrating our being itself?

Do we stay stuck in unregenerate nature because we fail to see and enter into the 'undergoing' emptiness of reversal and return?

Is the call to 'regenerate nature' what Passover and Baptism, Surrender and Enlightenment, Ahimsa and Moksha, Hashem and Avalokiteshvara, Tao and Waken Tanka -- all sound toward us?

Panta Rhea, ("Everything flows"), wrote Heraclitus.

Nature regenerates itself.

Going under.

And through.

This week.

In silence.

On retreat.

On retreat

...

Juncos arrive and scatter along ground below feeder. They join sleet, rain, and snow delivering Monday afternoon teisho.

What does it matter,
The new year, the old year?
I stretch out my legs
And all alone have a
Quiet sleep.
Don’t tell me the monks
Aren’t getting their instruction;
Here and there the nightingale
Is singing;
The highest Zen.
- Bankei, 1622-1693)

Snow flakes, size of silver dollars, slant foreground of Bald Mountain. Scattered and few, they are like rare visitors passing through only once. If unseen, then gone. If seen, then (also) gone, but first seen.

"Solitude can be a jungle," Mac once cautioned, when I fantasized about plunging into the monastic life. For this reason, he said, the Trappist novice is closely monitored when he begins his initial experience with solitude. "The first discoveries in solitude are generally not reassuring," Mac explained. "You confront your essential aloneness. You learn that whatever your life may be, it is of your making. Whatever others do to you, good or ill, they do by your leave, and often at your suggestion.
"Alone with your God, you find freedom. You are freed from the need to blame, freed of whatever holds you, impotent, in your past. No longer bound by fear of failure, or the need to be what you believe pleases others, you will discover what it is to be yourself."
(--from pp.35-36 in, Voices of Silence, Lives of the Trappists Today, by Frank Bianco, c.1991)

Nothing is done to me by another without the invitation to see the other as one's incorporable self. This is not easy meditation. Benefits include no lingering blame nor inclination to recrimination. Lifted from our disturbed mind is gerbil-wheel repetition of hurt feelings, revenge tactics, and special membership into club of injustice victims. (All these experiences might be true, temporarily needed, and really felt -- but they are not our identity.) We are not what we think we are. We are not the category of agony we file ourselves into.

We are sharers in silence. This silence is open-ended. It hesitates to break itself into story -- but it sometimes, compassionately, does. It shies from anything repetitive; looking, rather, for the once and once and once -- that which is always at origin, that which is inchoate -- the unfolding itself longing to be what it is in itself.

Do we hear the silence? Are we within the incorporable mystery of Christ-being revealed today.

Who is Christ if not the Word of God: "in the beginning was the Word, and the Words was with God, and the Word was God? This Word of God was made flesh and dwelt among us." He had no power of himself to die for us: he had to take from us our mortal flesh. This was the way in which, though immortal, he was able to die; the way in which he chose to give life to mortal men: he would first share with us, and then enable us to share with him. Of ourselves we had no power to live, nor did he of himself have the power to die.
In other words, he performed the most wonderful exchange with us. Through us, he died; through him, we shall live.
The death of the Lord our God should not be a cause of shame for us; rather, it should be our greatest hope, our greatest glory. In taking upon himself the death that he found in us, he has most faithfully promised to give us life in him, such as we cannot have of ourselves.
(--From a sermon by Saint Augustine, bishop, Office of Readings, Monday of Holy Week)

This wonderful exchange -- dying through us, living through him -- is Augustine's way of wording what Juncos dance atop split-open shells under feeder looking for seed not yet consumed. That seed, taken in by Junco, disappears into a reality it itself now creates.

Christ Teisho Junco -- A Holy Week Flap

Broken, open shell
disappearing seed through one-
another, shows how

wholeness dances -- now
is itself here...Christopher?*
...disappears. What joy!
(-wfh, 2apr07)

Fog mist surrounds everything this afternoon with its own soft obscure kindness.

Mountain disappears.

Who can bear it?
...

*{"Christopher" -- means "bearing Christ", derived from Late Greek (Christos) combined with (phero) "to bear, to carry".}

On retreat.
...

Last what? Last breath? Last "his"? The reading on Palm Sunday says, "With these words he breathed his last."

Seeing the Moon
A Zen poem says, "After the wind stops I see a flower falling. Because of the singing bird I find the mountain calmness." Before something happens in the realm of calmness, we do not feel the calmness; only when something happens within it do we find the calmness. There is a Japanese saying, "For the moon; there is the cloud. For the flower there is the wind." When we see a part of the moon covered by a cloud, or a tree, or a weed, we feel how round the moon is. But when we see the clear moon without anything covering it, we do not feel that roundness the same way we do when we see it through something else. When you are doing zazen, you are within the complete calmness of your mind; you do not feel anything. You just sit. But the calmness of your sitting will encourage you in your everyday life.... Even though you do not feel anything when you sit, if you do not have this zazen experience, you cannot find anything; you just find weeds, or trees, or clouds in your daily life; you do not see the moon.
( --Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginners Mind; Tricycle's Daily Dharma: April 1, 2007)

Cesco walks near my Sorel boots at Moose Point State Park in Searsport. Sea is unrippled. He is greeted in open field by shaggy gentle Bronson, twice his size. We walk edge of land. Cesco laps snowmelt.

Eucharist is rhubarb muffin and coffee from Chase's Daily. I visit church in Belfast for gospel reading and Fr. Joseph's preaching. I pray for Paco, and all the rest.

The veil of the Temple was torn right down the middle; and when Jesus had cried out in a loud voice, he said, ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit’ With these words he breathed his last.
(--from Luke 22:14 - 23:56)

On earth, on this planet, breath is lifeline. Jesus gives his breath back. He sends it back to, what is for him, source and only source of, life. As he dies. Gives over life-breath.

I will look again this Holy Week. Listen again. Again consider the mystery underlying each breath. This mystery points out nothing can be kept -- not breath, not unchanging self. The far side of the mystery is that only nothing can be kept.

But where do you keep nothing?

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.
(-- Poem by Robert Frost

No need to stay.

It's just...Why go? And, where?

Happy to be silent.

Just this.

One breath.

Make it.

Last.